on land. The other adjutants were older than I. One of them said I would have a bitter business, for the chief use of the militia was to search negro cabins for arms and to get drunk on training-days. Nevertheless, as I knew well enough, there was good stuff in the men of Virginia, and no better could be found than the men of the frontier, who were expert with the rifle and were more than a match for the Indians. As I learned from Lawrence, the candidates for these places of adjutant were either too old or were men of drunken habits; and as to the wandering soldiers of fortune who had had experience in war, they were not gentlemen of our own class, and this, I understood, was a question which the governor and council considered important.
When I went again to accept and thank the governor for the appointment, he talked to me at some length, and I learned that he was more largely interested in the Ohio Company than I had previously known, and that one reason for my appointment was my familiarity with the frontier country, where I might have to serve. Without further troubling myself as to why I, a
